A debugger may be a logic unit (e.g., a hardware and/or a software program) that is used to debug (e.g., to correct, repair, fix, etc.) other hardware/software programs. The other hardware/software programs may operate on a device (an integrated circuit) the debugger is running on, and/or may operate on a different device (e.g., a similar device, a dissimilar device, a software code, and/or an embedded processor, etc.).
A Digital Signal Processor (DSP) can be a special-purpose processor used in a digital signal processing application (e.g., an application having sources such as audio, video, weather satellites, earthquake monitors, etc.). The DSP may use a pipelining architecture to process data faster than a standard microprocessor (e.g., an Intel® Pentium®, etc.). By using the pipelining architecture, the DSP may provide simultaneous and/or parallel processing of overlapping operations by moving data and/or instructions into a conceptual pipe (e.g., stages of the conceptual pipe may be performed simultaneously). For example, while one instruction is being executed, the DSP may decode a next instruction.
Debugging the DSP may not work well (e.g., may cause a crash of an auxiliary peripheral, adding code to shut off the auxiliary peripheral may cause a change in a pipelining order, etc.) when the pipelining architecture is utilized in real-time data processing (e.g., an error such as a speckle may be only visible when a live-video is running, etc.). Furthermore, a large amount of data may need to be recorded, encoded, and/or exported to the debugger using a limited number of output pins on the DSP.
In addition, the debugger may need to be customized for different types of the DSP because of a wide variety of instructions that may be pipelined and the varying packet size of instructions. In each of the different types of the DSP, a large amount of storage may be required to perform the debugging because of the pipelined nature of various operations (e.g., storing output data of each operation may require a massive data buffer). Therefore, the debugging of different types of the DSP can be a difficult, time consuming, expensive, and/or frustrating process.